Walking with Atticus at Thorne Pond

For all the certainty we chase after, what we mostly have in the great unknown.

When I am alone, I sometimes ponder my sickness. Not out of pity, but circumstances.  I contemplate how Atticus and I were both sick at the same time, and both of us could have died, but I’m the one who lived, even though it didn’t seem like I would some days.

I deal with my grief on my own. There is a public me who is mostly okay, and occasionally a flash flood of tears will let loose, but it happens more when I’m alone. I appreciate my friends and all the loving sentiments sent this way from people who know me from our book or from social media, but what I’m doing now is an inside job. It’s up to me to work through it and come out the other side. No one can help with that.

I usually post something on our Facebook page and then retreat, letting my moderators deal with the comments. Occasionally they’ll point out a few to me, and I’ll respond. But for now soul work is all important and what I need and want. Meanwhile, people tell me I should be broken, I should be incomplete, I will never heal. They tell me I should be smiling; I should be happy because of all we shared or thrilled by the public sentiment toward Atticus.

But what I want is for no one to tell me what I should be doing or feeling. I just want to be. This is the cost of social media, I suppose. It helps to step away.

Lately, I’ve been walking at Thorne Pond on my own. This was a favorite place of Atticus once he couldn’t hike anymore. We’d get lost in the woods, and by the river, with one of the only lowland views of the iconic Mount Carrigain. (It's ironic that you can see it from nearly every four thousand footer, but not from most anywhere else down below.)

Whenever I walk by the pond, by the ducks and the birds coming and going, across the stubbled field, and enter in the mint green woods, I feel release. My shoulders are suddenly unbound and unburdened. I feel myself looking around through the sun-dappled woods, and half expect to see him there. At times, I feel like we are walking together, not like we were in the last couple of weeks or even the last year, but before that when his legs had springs in them, and his ears flopped in happiness as he trotted along.

The other day I stopped where he used to get his drink of water. The day before that, when I was tired, I rested and leaned on my trekking poles. When it was time to go, I looked down to where he’d be sitting in the past, right beside me, and I asked, “Do you want to go first?”

Into the afternoon light, we walked as it splashed through the leaves and gave them tips of gold. Along the water, we moved as wind whipped up little waves and diamonds rushed downstream while reflecting the sun. We – my memory and me.

People are always telling me where Atticus is, what he’s doing, or what he’s thinking. They are well-intentioned, but the truth is, no one knows anything. We talk about what we wish was true, or what we want to believe, but in the end, I leave it all in mystery. That to me is gift enough for I believe in the grand unknown.

I have no clue if Atticus’s spirit is waiting for me somewhere. I hope it isn’t. I mean, I hope he’s off on his next adventure, because I may be a while, and I would be selfish to expect him to wait for me. What I feel as company is his inspiration and the love we kindled together into a flame. I will always have that, the beauty of how we touched each other through a fourteen-year-long dance of swinging and swaying, of embraces, and dips and lifts.

As I sat on a fallen birch tree, again to catch my breath, leaning forward on my poles, I found myself smiling. For the powers that be have delivered me through hell, and I’m optimistic enough to think, “What’s next?” in the most positive way. For I had something so special, so special that Atticus waited for me until I got out of the hospital to say goodbye. It was the exclamation point at the end of a love story that will never grow old for me.

During the final stretch of the woods, the sun had dropped from the sky and shadows spread their wings everywhere. But still I smiled, picturing him bounding ahead of me as I hurried along as best I could, my right legs limping out of weakness. And when I took the last turn and climbed a short rise, I grunted because my legs are still so weak, but when I stepped out into the remaining glow of the day, there was the pond and the mountains and green trees, and the only thing I could think to say was, “Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

A week from this Sunday, I’ll take this still withered body and my trekking poles, which I need for balance and to propel myself uphill, and I’ll climb my first mountain without Atticus leading the way. I’ll do it for him, and I’ll do it for me, one month after getting out of the hospital. It’s been a tradition for us. A month after my gallbladder surgery, he led me, my drainage tubes, large scars, and bag up a mountain. Then, just under a month of having his toe amputated due to cancer, we climbed the same mountain again. So it’s only right I push forward this third time...for him, for me, and for us.

While he won’t be leading me, he’ll be with me nevertheless, inside my heart, just as he’s always been.

One of my main beliefs is that nothing is truly ever taken from us. Things change forms and loss becomes gain. I will forever move forward from the difficult experiences of the past two months knowing I’m alive, and I have been given the gift of arduous experiences knowing they’ve made me stronger, wiser, and more complete. I'm not sure why things happened as they did, or why I'm alive while Atticus isn't. I leave all that up to the mystery of things. Through tears and smiles I move on, through difficulty and joy it's onward, by all means.

It’s like Joseph Campbell said when Bill Moyers asked him the meaning of life.

“I don’t think people are looking for the meaning of life; they’re looking for the experience of being alive.”


(I've created a memorial fund in Atticus's name at the Conway Area Humane Society. To donate to help animals in need, simply click on this link. Thank you.)